LeadingIn.Tech #1: What's new this month?
October 2020
Hi there!
This is the first edition of the LeadingIn.Tech newsletter. This newsletter is meant to keep you updated about the new resources added to the toolkit I'm building that is meant for leaders in technology.
📖 Books
Last week discovered this book 📖The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier and added it to the toolkit 👓For Engineering Managers. I've discovered it after reading one of the lasts issues of Samuel Gil's Suma positiva newsletter; the newsletter is in Spanish and I highly recommend it. In it he summarises very well the contents of the book and the purpose the 7 coaching questions listed below. So I decided to start reading the book this week and I've been discovering it as a great resource to add to the Engineering Manager's toolkit.
I've found this book as a perfect follow up to the 📖Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek | Goodreads book which I've finished a few weeks back and added to the toolkit. I like very much how both books address the approach of leading people both by creating Circle of Safety as Sinek describes and also engaging in adult-to-adult relationships in The Coaching Habit to let people thrive. By applying this concepts while leading others you will have as a result an engaged team that feels safe to innovate and have the needed focus to pursue their goals with high independence which will allow you be more productive with your time and use it to better lead them to achieve your organisations mission.
👥 1:1 Conversation: Questions❓
Here are the 7 questions you should add to your 👥1:1 Conversations (and maybe the only ones you will ever need):
🧠What’s on your mind? (The Kick Start Question)
➕And what else? (A.W.E. Question)
🎯What do you want? (Foundation Question)
🧩What’s the real challenge here for you? (Focus Question)
⛑️How can I help? (Lazy Question)
🚫If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to? (Strategic Question)
💡What was most useful for you? (Learning Question)
👨🏽🎓 Courses
Last month Darren Murph the head of Remote of Gitlab made the announcement of their new training 👨🏽🎓How to Manage a Remote Team | Coursera which I have completed recently and I can say that this is a must if you are an Engineering Manager who is managing or is planning to transition a team to operate in a 🌐Remote setup. In it you will learn the benefits and the challenges of remote work. You will also learn how to build and hire a remote workforce. You will be given tools to help you create the culture and values needed and understand why it is important to be intentional. In it you will learn how to manage a remote team, evaluate performance, morale and success metrics. Also you will learn to assess the current level of remote that your organisation has and understand the adaptation process to follow to reach the desired remote type that best suits for the organisation and create the transition plan. And finally you will learn to embrace Asynchronous as the default form of communication.
One of the highlights of the training in context of this newsletter topic is that you will learn how to let your team operate with independence. You will understand that building the right environment for your team to know what the goals are and what is expected from them is a much better approach than the command-and-control one. These environments create a more engaged workforce that have the intrinsic motivation necessary to generate right outcomes and boost innovation.
